Fic: Wolf on Sheep's Clothing - SS/RL; NC-17 Title: Wolf on Sheep's Clothing Pairing : Severus/Remus Rating:: NC-17 Warnings: Angst - followed by comfort!sex Word count: 1,400 Notes: A bit of an angsty back-story, but a lot of happy endings. The title is not a misprint. Summary: Remus takes Severus home to Mum.
Would you like to sin With Remus Lupin On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer to err With a were On some other fur?
The War had split so many families that it was a shock to find that it had also brought long lost families together again. Before the War, or even during it, especially during that strange year when Dumbledore had employed Remus Lupin as Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor (and his motives for doing that had occupied Snape's mind frequently during the following years) if anyone had asked about Lupin's family they were met with a shrug and a blank wall. "Lost," was the werewolf's monosyllabic response to such enquirers, though whether he had lost them, or they him, was never stated.
Sitting in the snug conservatory and leafing through the photograph album Severus found himself reflecting on how much Remus had lost.
"And that," said the grey-haired woman by his side, "Is the last one. It was taken at Ramsgate in '66. We had some lovely family holidays. Until the... event."
The time-bleached photograph showed a small boy, brown-eyed, brown-haired and brown-skinned from the sun, trotting along the edge of the sea, jumping the wavelets as they broke on the wet sand and erased his small footprints at each pass. A big dog, tongue lolling and sandy to the hocks and elbows, bounced into frame and raced along beside him, spray fountaining from his paws and over the boy. The loop of the sequence stopped when the animal got too far ahead and out of the frame.
An ordinary scene, but watching it brought tears to two pairs of eyes.
"You were allowed to take dogs onto the beach in those days," said the woman. "We didn't think anything of it. I remember Remus' father throwing a few stones at it to get it to back off a bit, but Remus was having a great time playing - until... until they both went missing and... well, you know what happened."
In fact no-one knew what had happened the day six year old Remus Potter had vanished from a muggle beach in full daylight. But there was no doubt that he and the eleven year old boy who had received a Hogwarts letter addressed to 'Remus Lupin' and who had been treated as the Headmaster's personal 'ward' (as had Tom Riddle years before), were one and the same.
The same as the man who was currently three sets up in the game of tennis he was playing against his brother Romulus.
Severus closed the book and lifted it into a side table before rising and walking out through the French windows and onto the verandah overlooking the tennis court. The man's skin was as brown as the boy's had been on that long-ago summer; and his movement as confident, his smile as bright. Severus could see the boy in the man. And so much more.
He ran a hand down the scars on his own throat. They had both been bitten by evil; had both seen their lives changed. Lives had so many crossroads, so many choices. Somewhere, in some other reality, Remus had never been kidnapped by Greyback, had never become the werewolf orphan. Somewhere there was a Severus Snape who had remained friends with Lily Evans - perhaps even become lovers. Somewhere there were a Remus Lupin and a Severus Snape who had died during the battle for Hogwarts.
So many possibilities. Would either of them have lived their lives differently if they had known about those possibilities?
But what mattered was the here and now.
With a final smash that bounced the ball just over the line, Remus lost the game to the younger man. Severus wondered, as he watched his partner congratulate Romulus on winning the match, whether his own presence had prompted the botched return. Then Remus was bounding up the steps to the verandah to join him.
He tolerated the swift hug, and the scent of sweaty maleness , recognising Remus' underlying need for reassurance. The man had barely got used to having his family; introducing his male partner to them could not have been easy.
"So what have you been up to?" Remus asked.
"Your mother has been showing me your baby pictures," he said.
"Merlin! Not... not..."
Severus leaned close enough to whisper. "Yes. The one of you naked on the sheepskin rug." He felt the tension leave his lover, relief that the poignancy of that last picture wasn't going to be brought up between them - at least, not yet. "There's a sheepskin rug in our room," Severus continued. "It may even be the same one."
"Oh?" Remus cocked his head and raised a hopeful half-grin, looking more wolf-like than he had any right to this far from the night of a full moon.
"Yes," said Severus." And as I've now seen you naked on a sheepskin rug I thought that, tonight, you might like to... have... me in the same circumstances..."
Remus dropped the tennis racquet and pulled his lover into an embrace that made it clear to both of them just how much that thought appealed. "Why wait until tonight?" he breathed.
"Mmmm." Severus thoughtfully nuzzled his partner's neck. "Should we? Under your Mothers roof?"
"She gave us a double bed and an en-suite. I don't think she expected us to be celibate for the duration of this visit. But I'm clapped out. Been running around after balls all day. You're going to have to do most of the work."
Severus smiled, both at the double entendre and the demand. Above them, low on the horizon, the moon was no more than the curve of a fingernail paring. The time of the month when Lupin was at his least dominant and most vulnerable. And today's meeting with his family to introduce a partner who was not only male, but a marked Death Eater - albeit a hero of the War, had made him more anxious than Severus had ever seen before.
"If you insist," he murmured, and then sniffed. "You need a shower."
Remus grabbed his hand without more ado. "I did mention the en-suite in our bedroom," he pointed out. "You can get yourself ready on that rug while I clean up."
~~~~
Remus emerged from the shower, glanced across the room - and dropped his towel.
The sheepskin rug was no longer on the floor. Severus had flung it across the bed and now lay starfished on it, stark naked, his own black hair a stark contrast to the white fleece. The vision was the answer to a dream he'd not realised that he had. His gentlemanly response to the sight did not go unnoticed.
Severus smirked, and flicked his wand. "Prophylacta."
"You're very good at that," Remus groaned as the cloaking spell wrapped itself around his hard length.
"Since I've been teaching it to Fifth year students, along with brewing lubricant and contraceptive potions for the past decade it would be surprising if I weren't." Severus said sternly.
"No. I meant..." What Remus had meant was lost in a groan of pleasure as his partner dragged him down onto the bed and buried his tongue in his mouth.
"You did say I was to do all the work," he whispered, frotting his own similarly magically sheathed cock against the werewolf's balls.
Remus bucked. "Damn! You are good at that," he growled as slicked ridges and tiny, tingling dimples stimulated every nerve they touched. He felt Severus' smug grin through the renewed kiss before the other man rolled them both over and pressed him back onto the soft fleece. It was pure, hedonistic bliss. His fingers dug into the wool, seeking purchase as Severus moved to straddle him and it became obvious that his promise to do the work in this encounter extended beyond preparing the bed. Remus found himself being guided easily into the other man's body, into slick flesh and pulsing warmth, and tight nirvana. He caught his breath, torn between the need to thrust, and the desire to watch the concentrated expression of love and ecstasy on the face above him as Severus rode them both to orgasm.